I’m Now a Criminal In My Tolerant Home Town of Boulder, Colorado

Boulder, Colorado resident Jon Caldara woke up a criminal on January 1.

Because I own a long gun with a pistol grip and a detachable magazine, I had to the end of December to self-identify to the police, present myself for investigation and my gun for inspection, pay fees in order to receive a police-issued permission slip, all to avoid jail time, monetary penalties, and the confiscation and destruction of my gun.

I have never been convicted or even charged with a crime in my 54 years of life, but this week I became a criminal. I am no different then potentially thousands of other Boulderites who cannot bring themselves to submit to this ugliness. And yes, I know, most people today don’t see this as ugly or intolerant, but simply a reasonable thing to do about this “epidemic.” After all, something needs to be done.

For publicly stating that I will not comply, my daughter has been targeted at her Boulder school, the one with posters celebrating tolerance and diversity all over the walls. My refusal to submit has been commented on by teachers in front of their classes. She has been ganged up on by students and bullied because “her father is a murderer.” She is worried that I will be taken to jail. As a single dad to her and her handicapped brother, I have to admit I’m worried about that too.

Jon Caldera is well known in Colorado as a Libertarian political advocate and radio and TV personality. Jon is announcing this because I am sure that he is thinking through using himself as a test case to challenge the city of Boulder’s apparent violation of Colorado’s firearm law preemption statute.

The whole damn system is backwards. How about we demand a NICS check for all new laws, local, state, federal? Have to be reviewed by the judicial system and found constitutional before they can be put into effect. This crap of manufacturing felons in order to prove the myth that gun owners are violent (NOT until unlawfully threatened!) is getting to feel a lot like hate crimes in my view. Resist! #METOOARMED

Don: The whole damned system has been backwards now for decades! Remember both
the Earl Warren and Warren Supreme Courts, career criminal socialist politicians from
our shameful corrupt past: Lyndon B. Johnson, Ted Kennedy, and their corrupt rotten
ilk! Also, the treasonous fabricator of the damnable odious 1968 Federal Gun Control
Act, the late Senator Thomas Dodd (D) of Connecticut, LBJ’s lieutenant then in the U.S.
Senate. My point is the criminal injustice system itself has been deceitful, crooked immoral, and corrupt for decades, not to mention various members of Congress, state legislators, judges, and an abusive judiciary! This didn’t happen over night. It progressively became worse over the decades. And the deceitfully dumbed down,
ignorant and stupid voters who keep re-electing these repeat offenders back into office!
Donald Trump, while by no means perfect, is an obvious threat to the establishment quo,
globalists, those guilty of high treason, and considerably more crimes against our republic. This is why the establishment news media continues to vilify, castigate, hate,
despise, and attack Trump.

@mike
“Criminal background checks for all politicians.
Drug and Alcohol testing.
Credit checks.
Check their social media.
Make it a criminal offence to lie to the people”

Amen…this is spot on. The issue is holding them accountable. Look at DC and other cities that have repeatedly elected officials with known criminal pasts or current criminal issues…can help the ignorant but can’t help the stupid.

Can somebody please tell me WTF a candidate’s tax returns are supposed to reveal? Has anybody here ever filled out a tax return, or even looked at one? There is no great store of secret information there, it is simply BORING, and would be boring if the numbers were billions, millions, or thousands. It won’t show you bribes, corruption, kickbacks, or much of anything else, what is the fuss about? What do you expect to find? Supposedly candidates have been “releasing” their tax returns for decades, who here has *ever* looked at one?

Since Al Capone, every illegal transaction is recorded on tax returns. That’s just how it is. And every business tax form reports who did what, with which and to whom. All the names, dates, everything you want in order to charge the candidate/politician with crimes. At the least, all the income from criminal collusion would be visible. And all the donations to illegal enterprises would be right there for everyone to see and admire. The mere fact that politicians would reveal wrong doing is a deterrent to wrongdoing. Even if it isn’t wrongdoing, the public will be able to see who is able to use money to control the politician.

If POTG have to prove they are not bad guys before they can own guns, politicians must be treated the same…proving they are not bad guys before they can be elected. “Transparency” will ensure only the right sort of person can be a politician.

They are the only profession which doesn’t have licensing. Most states require beauticians and barbers to get licensed for crying out loud. We can’t make politicians get a license that they might be concerned about keeping?

You are not alone Jon. I’m also amongst the “criminals ” only difference is my shit of a state N.Y. it is truly amazing to me that we abide by the law , are peaceful citizens , would risk our lives for our fellow man , yet if we refuse to submit to the infringment’s the anti’s are trying their best to force upon us “we become criminals ” I grew up respecting the law . getting a college education , doing my best to respect my fellow man. I also grew up respecting our constitutional rights.
It’s 2019 and it is not looking good for POTG , the democrats are absolute in their efforts to make our 2nd Amendment a meaningless document they see as antiquated. I do not , will not , give another inch. They’ve taken too much already. So I guess my point is , the more of us , the better.

Yup, that’s the way it was for me in Kalifornia. Within a month of retirement, all I saw was Kalifornia was in my rear view mirror, and I haven’t looked back. It’s up to all of us to change our situation. Pretty soon Kalifornia will be nothing but socialists. The good, honest folks will be gone and nothing left but the leftist idiots. So be it and good riddance. It’s up to you New Yorker’s to do the same. Yea, it’s tough to pick up and leave, but I’ve never been happier. And the same to all of you living in the socialists states of America. Leave as soon as you can. You won’t regret it.

Until you run out of places to leave to. Maybe you’ll die before that point comes and don’t care? Then it’ll be your children doing the regretting. Whatever it takes to be able to say you got yours, I guess.

You mean this “ghost” gun control, where the would-be rulers make unenforceable laws and the people ignore them? Could be worse. It hurts less when you cease even considering compliance, just giggle and carry on.

I’m sure that sounded cool and tough when you were looking to make a cool and tough comment, but it doesn’t really make any sense. There are at least a few degrees between “run away from problem” and “lead glorious revolution” that you might have overlooked.

“…please don’t bring Kalifornia or Noo Yawk ideas with you and eff it up here, too.”

Liberals/leftist/Demoncrat refugees are all alike…leave a hellhole for somewhere new, and less expensive. In such places, they can re-install all the failed policies being fled, and and at less cost. Replacement installation can take years, meanwhile they get all the benefits at less cost. When things become intolerable and expensive, move again. When the fun runs out, run out.

People who live in Colorado don’t buy one day lift tickets at the base of the lift. Multi day passes, discount tickets, season tickets, etc. are available. You can also keep costs down a lot if you own or have a few friends who own rental/AirBnB type properties in the high country. Even with all that said, though, skiing has certainly gotten pretty expensive. Of course, my knees are close to the same age as Vail so lift ticket price is not a big issue for me anymore.

Lived in Colorado in the mid-70s, and mid-80s. We could see the turn from a laid-back western atmosphere to one more agitated and commercial.

As skiers, we were very sensitive to pricing of lift tickets. It was a tense time when the resorts approached, then passed, the $20 mark. What we saw was as prices escalated (allegedly to keep riff-raff off the slopes), the attitudes of the people became more arrogant and belligerent. On a gondola ride, we overheard some east-coasters bitching about lift prices, and the lack of urgency of people in Colorado. When a companion noted to the complainer that he was being too loud and harsh, the complainer stated, “When I am paying $25 to ski, I can act any way I like.”

Not sure I want to rub elbows with people paying $179 to ride the gondola.

I was in Breck last March. Everything in the local shops were name brands all made in China. Nothing local about it. It was awkward and kinda sad. There was a fly shop there that was nice. But nothing about skiing snowboarding seemed local?

Jury nullification…It’s legal and non reversible by a judge…Learn about it and use it…Each and every time you set on a jury…If these politicians want to screw with your Rights… Screw with their game and give them the Chaos they seem to want. Keep Your Powder Dry.

Jury nullification will eventually be used in nearly all legal system cases/crimes/processes/events and will clog up the entire judiciary. Mad at your local government…. cause an expensive mistrial in your next stint as a juror. It’s another means of fighting an fascist elite ruling class.

So when they come to his door is any other gun owner going to be there to stop them from arresting him? Most likely no. We have to stand against this as a community folks. Letting them pick us off one by one while we just hope the arrested individual has a good lawyer isn’t going to cut it. Showing up armed and in mass to defend our rights is the only thing that will stop this shit. But the nation of gun owners is basically all mouth and no action. We are our own enemies because we are just to scared to fight. All it would take will be a couple of firefights and the Dems would run from this. No one wants to be that guy though. Good luck assholes.

Are you kidding? Shooting at “our brave officers in the line of duty” as they “tried to enforce the law to make the community safe from a potential mass shooter” would play right into their hands. They’d have legislation sitting on every executive desk it could reach by the end of the week, probably with broad public support from all the sheeple whose only understanding would be “look at all those gun nuts shooting at police on TV!”

I think we’d be much better off, for now at least, by simply turning up unarmed at the scene of something like a red flag raid and protesting it as loudly as possible. Publicly shaming the people who created these garbage laws and the police who inplement them will at least open the way for people to actually consider the point we’re making.

This is what happens when liberals from the west coast flee from high rent districts and invade other states bring their liberal views. What is most distressing is these individuals are being voted into office by Coloradans.

Not just Colorado. Texas is another one. We get all the influx from California and other liberal states because we are not like where they are leaving. Then most of them start trying to change everything here to be like where they came from. If you want it like it was where you left then go back and leave us alone. Our ways work for us. This is also what is happening in Europe right now. A certain demographic has migrated into France, Germany, Great Britain and other countries. They flee oppression and war in their home countries and come to “the promised land” them start trying to make their host country into the image of where they just fled. It is happening here as well. Time to wake up and straighten this out.

I’m not surprised. Having spent some time in Boulder, it is definitely overpopulated by white, wealthy folk from upper class to rich backgrounds whose biggest problem in life is choosing what kind of latte they are going to have this morning or which type of flow yoga they want to focus on this month.

People who live in a bubble don’t understand the experiences of those who live outside that bubble, for one reason: they don’t have to. I’m sure these citizens are 100% confident that if they ever need to call the cops, the cops will come, and that the cops will always, always be on their side. In fact, they’ll all sit down and smoke some legal weed together and hold hands for kumbaya.

Here’s the good news though.

Unlike many on this forum I don’t think gun owners as a community are weak and unwilling to fight. What I think is that historically in this country gun owners haven’t HAD to fight, and most especially haven’t had to fight the kinds of battles that minority populations of any type have had to fight in order to gain recognition, equality, and protection. Generally, the overwhelming attitude has been, “Well, it’s in the Constitution so you can just read it. It’s right there. That’s enough.”

I just think that gun owners, especially those of us who own a lot of guns, might find ourselves in a minority position, like the author of the article. The good news is that at this point, there is a pretty substantial history of how minority populations in this country have fought that fight. There’s good documentation about what worked and what didn’t work. If it came to that, we can learn from the successes and failures of those who went before us.

I do think that one of the challenging factors is that with most minority populations, the challenge for recognition and equality is based on something the person cannot change – ethnicity, skin color and so forth. With gun ownership, it’s about something you own, or it looks that way on the surface. But I do think from my own experience as a multicultural therapist that gun owners, especially those of us who seriously train and practice, are different, and have a distinct culture. So perhaps it would be more like a church that applies for the enforcement of religious freedom or a community of gamers advocating for a free Internet.

I also see the possibility of forming clubs that teach firearms as part of leadership training, just like any other martial art does. One could study sword, staff, hand to hand, knife, and guns. That’s how I see my own training, as a martial art that I do mostly for the mental benefits and ways in which it conditions me to be self responsible, thoughtful, and approach life in a certain way.

I’m free associating, but I keep thinking about creative ways that gun ownership and use can be reformulated and presented to progressives in a way that they relate to. Because yelling about the 2A isn’t doing it. Anyone truly believing in multiculturalism and tolerance perhaps needs to educated about the culture and beliefs of gun owning people. The question would be how to do that.

Using the plight of other minorities if Eric Holder is any indication they’re already planning on gun owner conversion therapy. Hell, to look at public schools and MSM broadcasts gun owner conversion therapy is well under way and if they can’t convert the gun owner they can at least train the mob to hate the gun owner.

Maj Toure is doing great work trying to change the hearts and minds. Fortunately for him he’s black and the mob doesn’t know what to do with him. If he were just another white guy the hate would be piling on. There’s a race on to make straight black men the next straight white men. If that succeeds the mob will be free to hate Maj just like they hate any other white guy and his message will be dismissed.

What’s a straight white guy to do? Any action at all is interpreted as hostile. I suppose we just keep our heads down and hope enough non-white, non-straight, non-males get it through their skulls that these rights belong to them too and hope they affect enough change before the only non-hostile, non-supremacy voice is the lone non-binary, a-sexual, a-racial, a-ethnic neutral entity that nobody can find any -ist op -phobic to attach to it.

Agreed that at this particular point in history, being straight white and male AND a gun owner is an automatic negative association to certain progressives, mostly those of the SJW camp, who also confound us old school liberals by the way.

Then again, how’s that any different than the kind of prejudice other populations have faced? Really isn’t that different. Us Asians are all conning thieves who are coming to steal the automotive industry. Black men are all thugs waiting to happen. I have a lot of Jack Mormon clients, who are white and generally conservative in terms of their values in some ways (the polyamory thing being an interesting exception) and the story of the Jack Mormons in this country is TOTALLY the story of a white sub-population fighting for their rights, creating their own communities, and following their own path with a lot of toughness and ferocity.

Personally I think the answer is in alliance. I’m a Vietnamese American woman and so far, not only do liberal and progressive people in my world not have a problem with my gun ownership, they actually think it’s amazingly cool, which is odd. I can easily make a case for training and fighting with guns as part of my cultural heritage, since that’s exactly what the women of my other “mother country” did about 50 years ago to kick all the imperialists out of the country. So there’s a certain amount of punch in that, it fits right into the interests of those big on identity politics, and yet integrates gun ownership and training as part of that deal.

I’m going to say this too: I don’t believe in keeping your head down. I don’t keep my head down. I think staying silent and hiding allows a group to easily be further fractured, split off, and marginalized. I do understand that most gun owners prefer to be private about their ownership. I’ve chosen to take a different path with it. I think of how powerful it would be if all these people that own guns were to show up in support of Jon Caldera and say, simply, “Me too.” There would be so many people that one didn’t expect. I think that’s one of the challenges of the gun community – the desire for privacy and how that privacy also works against forming a strong and coherent presence to skillfully push back against the erroneous perceptions of non gun owners.

Elaine, you are right, progressives don’t have a problem with gun ownership as such, the problem is the population who seems to champion gun ownership. In America gun ownership is associated with rabid right wing organizations like the KKK who have used guns to terrorize minority populations for 100 years. Progressive gun owners need to form a social narrative of responsible gun owner ship as a right just like free speech or freedom of the press.

And threats to assassinate LEOs enforcing laws or court orders will not be viewed well by the majority of Americans citizens.

More like sheltered. When I was spending time in Boulder for a training program I was in, I would eavesdrop conversations in the public places I spent time in – coffee shops, restaurants, what have you. Most of those conversations were between two stoned out people who were agonizing about stuff like this:

Woman A: So, like, I’m torn. I can’t decide, do I want to go to India and spend a year in an ashram. I’ve been feeling like I want to connect in that bigger way, you know, get away from all this.

Woman B: Mmmm-hmmmm. That would be AMAZING. I can totally see that being a way for you to connect to Spirit and expand yourself to the next place. Yeah.

Woman A: But I’ve also been thinking, like, I could totally marry Jonny and HAVE A BABY. We’ve been talking about it. I mean, wouldn’t that be AMAZING?

Woman B: Oh, I can totally see that. You would be an AMAZING mom. And you would connect so deeply to your partner.

Woman A: OR, I could totally apply to graduate school at Pacifica. My trust fund would pay for all of it. I just can’t decide. I am SO TORN.

Woman B: Take a deep breath. You’ll figure it out. The Universe will guide you.

Smoking weed and being ‘sheltered’ doesn’t change the fact that you’re stupid. It isn’t even a valid excuse for stupidity. They’ll learn they’re stupid when (if) the police show up before they bleed out. Woman A, ‘Gee there’s a lot of blood, why weren’t the police here before that man stabbed me?’

Well, weed makes people stupid. I’m likely gonna get hammered for saying that, but it’s true. Which is why I’m against legalization though that, like gun restriction, is on the way, too much money in it to resist for too many folks. Also, a stupid, stoned out population is way easy to control.

Add to that the fact that humans aren’t that bright anyway (as David Dunning said, we really only, as a species, NEED to be smart enough to solve the calorie problem and reproduce) and a huge dose of meandering New Age spiritual hodgepodge, and well, there you go.

gosh, it’s as though a veil’s been lifted.
i can almost hear the y’s inserted between the first consonant and vowel.
wifey dogsat at my identrical twin sister in law’s single family converted two flat.
been tranquil round these parts fer a while.
that last whack of tenderloin would make a nice syandwedge.

A conservative scholar I have been mentoring for a while (yep, truth) said to me the other day, “The thing we should be afraid of, that no one is afraid enough of in this country, is everyday stupidity.”

Yep.

I have two of David Dunning’s books. He researches stupidity which he kindly calls “mediocrity” and how it affects all of the decisions people make. This interview series with him is pretty great.

Weed makes stupid people stupider and smart people less smart. But I don’t support the prohibition of weed because a) the Mexican drug cartels make bank on illegal weed (and they’re not very nice people) and 2) the War on Drugs is far more pernicious than the drugs themselves. If I hear someone breaking in my door at 3:00am do you know what my first thought will be? It will be that it’s a SWAT team with the wrong address looking for some two bit pot dealer. I’m personally more afraid of the police than the criminal. At least I can shoot the criminal. If there’s more than one criminal the rest will almost certainly run away when I shoot the first one through the door. If I shoot the first LEO through the door my best possible outcome is that they set up a perimeter around my house and wait. They’ll shoot your dog, throw flash-bangs in your baby’s crib and if you don’t immediately follow the multiple shouted, conflicting commands they’ll shoot you, then get a month’s paid vacation for doing it.

Perhaps a good compromise is let people smoke all the weed they want, but make them ineligible to vote.

Agreed that there are complexities involved in its being illegal that are not great. And SOME people have a legitimate case for medicinal use – though not nearly as many as claim to need it.

That said, what weed does is a lighter version of what opioids do – it makes you totally content where you’re at, even if where you’re at is a shitty place. It makes you passive and non-resistant. If we want an active, educated, willing to fight populace, I’m not sure that legal weed is the way to go. The black market still exists in the states with legal weed and has gotten even bigger according to some accounts I’ve read, so it didn’t solve the cartel problem at all.

I just think of the wider long term effect on our society of people widely using a drug that makes you passive, content, and not likely to try to change things. That scenario does not look good for gun owners IMO.

I have never met, nor even ever heard of anyone who doesn’t smoke weed because it’s illegal. Places like Boulder are especially shitty because people who smoke weed are drawn to where it’s legal, but they’ll smoke it whether it’s legal or not. And those who don’t won’t even if it is legal.

One problem created in those places where it’s been legalized is that they’ve over-regulated it’s sale and production so that the illegal weed is cheaper than the legal stuff. With predictable results.

Has he thought of approaching the US attorneys office and attempting to file criminal civil rights violations charges against his daughters prosecutors? Document step by step the process and demand jail time for the school officials openly mistreating his daughter?

This is the modern reincarnation of the old practice of “shunning”. Such social rejection of those who don’t “get with the program” is very often more draconian and violent than any law, regulation, or ordinance could ever be; as Mr. Caldara and his family have discovered.

It is the herd/mob reaction carried to extremes, aided and abetted by social media and politicians. This is the real danger to liberty.

So, reality is that we will all eventually be legislated into criminals because we privately own firearms as per our right theoretically protected by the Second Amendment. From that perhaps we must conclude we have no actual rights any longer…only those “permitted” by our State or Locality.

Walter Williams (and others) has observed that the most predominate state of Human Governance has been a large number of people ruled/controlled absolutely by a very small number of people. Williams points out that the United States of America has been the most successful and long-lived democratic republic in history, but is now in decline and has an uncertain future over the next few decades.

A most famous writing on this is incorrectly attributed to James Fraser Tytler (but that does not diminish the content’s value), which defines the advent and demise of the Athenian Democracy of ancient Greece and provides an insightful and chilling description of what is happening in the American Constitutional Republic at present. See: http://www.actionamerica.org/fun/tytler.shtml for concisely presented details.

I can no longer even pretend to imagine what the resolution to the general situation facing us Americans can be.

I am sympathetic to Jon Caldara’s plight and concerned for him and his children’s future well-being. Frankly, it looks like their outlook along with many others in Boulder, CO, and elsewhere, is very bleak.

KAT AINSWORTH , I suggest you move, out of Boulder, maybe out of Colorado to Texas. IF someone SWAT”S you ( and it does happen, because liberals are very vindictive) you will be facing jail, large legal bills, and most importantly the loss of your children. The impact on them is not worth the risk. I am a solid 2A supporter, but as long is illegal laws are on the books, some very vulnerable people don’t need to take the stand. Do what’s right for your kids, remove the offending parts, sell the gun, or move. Let someone less vulnerable take up the fight, resistance is futile.

One of the most grating parts of my workday is having to listen to all the incessant sports talk in the breakroom while I”m getting lunch. ESPN is omnipresent on the TV, and it’s nothing but “THIS TRADE WILL BE SOOO BAD BUT ROOKIE YEAR SPORTSBALL” all the time. Meanwhile, the one or two times anyone has dared to discuss current events or the state of our governance, an awkward hush falls over the room until someone shifts it back to sportsball. Bread and circuses…

“When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
Huh. As it turns out, when guns are outlawed, law-abiding citizens become outlaws, automatically. The antigunners are turning patriots into criminals.

Sad. He’ll be stepped on by the system. I’d say there is a like a 10% chance the SCOTUS some day protects us from complete bans of standard capacity magazines and semi automatic “assault weapons”, but they’ll never protect us from the hundreds of “reasonable regulations” surrounding guns, like in Boulder. The issue with the Boulder law is that it appears to violate state law. Unfortunately the kourt system in this country is a couple steps ahead of the Soviet Union’s.

Well, to you potheads, I hope you don’t own any firearms because according to a 4473 form you can’t own a firearm if you are a user of marijuana. Thank god, I have never met a pothead that was even remotely a responsible or decent person.

As far as a $179 lift ticket in Boulder, I used to ski until the first time I rode a snowmobile. That was over 35 years ago. Snowmobiling is sooooo much better! If you don’t believe it get yourself on a machine. The snowmobiling community is full of great people.

Concerning law enforcement trends in Kalifornia just check on retired officers. They almost never stay in Kalifornia. In the last 15 years almost 700 retired officers from California have moved to Northern Idaho. that should tell you something, they don’t want to live in hell hole that California has become.